


4AM

by One_Chicago_Fanfiction



Category: Chicago Med, Chicago PD
Genre: Injured Jay, Traumatised Will, Vulnerable Voight, hospital angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:02:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24125578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/One_Chicago_Fanfiction/pseuds/One_Chicago_Fanfiction
Summary: Jay spends the night in hospital after getting shot on a case, and on this night he gets precisely two visitors.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 127





	4AM

It was a little late for visitors. That’s what the guy at reception had said, so Hank Voight suppressed a sigh and flashed his badge. The receptionist relented and waved him through, still not looking entirely convinced. Low in his throat Hank grumbled a thanks, pulled his shirt down over his badge and followed the hospital’s signs until he found what he was looking for. 

It was a room on the fifth floor, tall windows overlooking the hospital carpark and the glittering city skyline. Voight drew in a deep breath of hospital air, somehow as stale as it was antiseptic, and he slid his gaze to the figure in the bed. Pale and bruised, one arm in a sling, fast asleep with his head tilted to one side. Voight had walked these halls too many times. He’d lost too many people he’d cared about, broken too much bad news to people in hospital waiting rooms, in apartment hallways, in Chicago’s bitter cold on the streets. 

He watched the sleeping figure through the blinds and thought about how close they’d come to losing him. This wasn’t the first time, either. Jay Halstead was stubborn—impulsive and kind hearted and determined to uncover every glimmer of hope in their cases despite all the atrocities he’d seen, all the darkness he’d lived through. And today, Jay Halstead had a bullet removed from his shoulder and then pleaded with his doctors to let him go home afterwards. Voight let out a slow breath. The unit he ran would be Halstead’s one day. If the kid’s heart didn’t get him killed before that. 

-

Fatigue clung to Will as he walked into the ED two hours before his shift started. He didn’t change into his scrubs yet, just dropped off his bag in the locker room, set a timer on the coffee machine for ninety minutes from now and headed out. He’d barely slept. Every time he’d closed his eyes all he saw was Jay, bloody and bruised, barely conscious on the gurney they’d wheeled him in on the day before.

“Someone’s early,” said one of the nightshift nurses, looking a little tired, smiling kindly.

“Visiting my brother upstairs,” he said, and made his way towards the elevator, stood there taking measured, exhausted breaths as the elevator pulled him from the ground floor to the fifth, opened its doors before him as he spilled out into the hall. His shoes squeaked against the linoleum floor. He rubbed fatigue from his eyes. Jay hated hospitals. Will wanted to go in there with positive energy and a warm, brotherly smile. He doubted Jay was even awake at this hour, but just in case. He didn’t wanna look like someone who’d spent the night having dreams that his brother was dead.

When he reached his brother’s room, he halted. He stood by the window and watched, blinking to make sure he wasn’t seeing things—that Jay was fast asleep in the bed, and someone else was by his bedside. It took Will a moment to realise who it was. Jay’s sergeant, Hank Voight. Voight with his arms folded across his chest, Voight with eyes closed and his head tipped low. Voight fast asleep at Jay’s bedside as his brother slowly healed. It was barely 4AM. 

Will smiled softly at the sight, at the thought of Voight—a frightening man by almost every human standard—sitting by Jay’s bed as if to guard him, then falling asleep alongside him in the low light of the hospital room in the middle of the night. Bullet or no bullet, Jay was lucky, and he was loved, and Will could take a little comfort in that. 

He turned on his heel, padded back towards the elevator and decided he’d have coffee first, that he’d visit Jay when the sun came up.


End file.
